Date:         Wed, 14 Jun 1995 13:50:30 -0500 (CDT)
Sender:       Vanagon Mailing List <vanagon@vanagon.com>
From:         dakhlia@wuecona.wustl.edu (Sami Dakhlia)
Subject:      solar charging: questions...

Hi,

I just read Joel's post on alternators, which reminded me that I do have a
question for those who understand electrical stuff.

So I have 16 sq.ft of solar panels on the pop-top, but so far haven't been
able to put them to use. The reason is that the 16 Amp fuse to the battery
(aux. deep cycle) keeps blowing out. Before I put in a bigger fuse (30
Amp?), I would like to make sure I'm not doing anything stupid. 

The panel array is rated at 87 Watts, although David S. and I measured 16.2
Volts and 8.5 Amps on a sunny day, which is about 138 Watts, correct? The
panels were not connected to anything, then, although I don't know enough
about electro-physics to know if that should make any difference. It's just
that a new measurement a few days ago read *significantly* more than 10
Amps (the needle went way out of scale on the analog meter), when the
panels happened to be connected to the battery (and the fuse had not yet
blown out).

1) Are 16-17 Volts too much tension to charge a battery? If so, how can I
lower that and down to how much?

2) Is there a way that any excess current/energy/whatever generated by
the panels and not used to charge the battery can be redirected towards
other useful purposes, such as running the fridge (even when I don't use
it)? 

3) Right now, the panels are directly connected to the fridge (bypassing
the battery). Any reason why I shouldn't do this (e.g., can the fridge
take 16 Volts?)

4) Anything else I should know...?  :-)

Thanks,

S.

-- 
Sami ('75 Westf.)
dakhlia@wuecona.wustl.edu